Der Künstler Matthias Fritsch arbeitet gerade an seinem Film über den Technoviking – eine Geschichte über Internet-Meme und der Verletzung des Persönlichkeitsrechts. “Imagine this: you go dancing at a parade, there you will be filmed and suddenly this movie appears on the net. An artist makes art out of these images. From that moment on, your face buzzes out into the digital world. This case actually exists. The dancer is called Technoviking. He has become a famous figure on the Internet. However, it also raises a lot of questions: What are the boundaries between personality rights and the freedom of art? Can such a phenomenon be curbed at all by legal means? A feature length documentary on the popular Technoviking-Meme, one of the early really big videomemes on Youtube.” Mehr auf Deutsch dazu auch hier.

Nicht so neu, aber richtig gut, und gerade erst entdeckt (danke Public-Art-Lab-Jazzmin!): “The Sentient City Survival Kit probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. The project consists of a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city. As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, information processing becomes embedded in and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring our behavior within it and becoming an active agent in the organization of our daily lives. Few may quibble about “smart” traffic light control systems that more efficiently manage the ebbs and flows of trucks, cars and busses on our city streets. Some may be irritated when discount coupons for their favorite espresso drink are beamed to their mobile phone as they pass by Starbucks. Many are likely to protest when they are denied passage through a subway turnstile because the system “senses” that their purchasing habits, mobility patterns and current galvanic skin response (GSR) reading happens to match the profile of a terrorist. The project aims to raise awareness of the implications for privacy, autonomy, trust and serendipity in this highly observant, ever-more efficient and over-coded city.” Das wäre auf alle Fälle noch ein Kandidat für meine Ausstellung “Round 2. The Future Of DIY Activism” in Moskau gewesen…

Ein paar Bilder meiner Ausstellung “Art & Arcade” aus dem Haus für Elektronische Künste Basel, noch bis zum 25. Mai im MU in Eindhoven zu sehen & zu spielen: “If you are a gaming addict and an art freak, MU is THE place to be for you this April and May. Art & Arcade, a collection of ten gaming classics that have been given an artistic overhaul, is coming straight to Eindhoven from the Haus für Elektronische Künste in Basel where it premiered. Arcade video machines never go out of style. In the 1970s the first entertainment arcades appeared, the so-called Penny Arcades. As their name implies, they would spring to life after insertion of a coin. For decades these arcade games flourished, and classic games were developed and marketed for them, such as Pong, Space Invaders, Mario Bros, Tron Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Having grown up with these games it was inevitable that these visual artists would start using the arcade games in their work. They are restructuring the video games, fitting them with new functions, creating fantasy worlds and experimenting with 8-bit aesthetics to transform the gaming culture into art. MU | Strijp S will be transformed into a gaming arcade where you can indulge yourself with games such as Painstation, Pentapong, The Machine, Radical ATM Service, Tesla Arcade, Cage was a n00b and Racer. Guest curator: Alain Bieber. Participating artists: fur art entertainment interfaces | Canedo, Maingardt & Hartmann | Hussein Chalayan | Djeff | Iván Kozenitzky, Federico Lazcano | JODI | MOBILESKINO | Evan Roth | Haas, Wellershoff & Winter | Andreas Ullrich / C.Rockefeller Art Investment Group.”

Adam Harvey: “CV Dazzle“: “CV Dazzle explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology, the first step in automated face recognition.”

Aram Bartholl: “Killyourphone” & “Dead Drops“. “Dead Drops” is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. / Killyourphone is an open workshop format. Participants are invited to make their own signal blocking phone pouch super fast for little money.

Dennis P Paul: “Nullstecker”. Nullstecker is a very simple hack consisting of 220 V power plugs modifed to trigger short circuits when plugged into the wall, shutting down all electricity.

::vtol: wird eine neue Arbeit für die Ausstellung bauen, eine Apparat, mit der man den Schmutzgehalt der Luft analysieren kann. “Having analyzed air content the algorithm forms a small 2D image taking the photos of the dirtiest cities and converting them to the abstract computer graphics. Pushing on the button it is possible to print a little digital image immediately. This instrument is to move in the city to search the dirtiest places for their virtual cleaning by means of converting pollution data into micro objects of digital art which are remained on any surface.”

Vladimir Turner & Ondřej Mladý: “Safety First“. To denounce the inadequate number of bike lanes, one of the artists rides a bike through Prague night’s traffic, through parks and crowds, turning his path into a DIY bike lane, which was screened on the street in front of him through a small projector installed on the handle bars.

Hier noch einmal ein Auszug aus dem Konzept in EN: “Activism is a continouus race. Every actions creates a counter-action. Guerilla Gardening, adbusting, temporary sculptures in urban space are nice tools, but in an contemporary and digital warfare seems already quite antiquate. The exhibition and fashion show “Round 2. The Future of DIY Activism” presents in a humorous and inspiring way art projects from new media, net.activism and hacktivism, that are questioning the new challenges of our digital environment, issues like mass surveillance, free (internet) culture, media manipulation – and what activist can do against it. The works show how a new generation of artists, designers and engineers are taking a highly critical approach to the development and use of the engineered systems and infrastructures that we increasingly rely on for daily life. And the particularity of the show is that all presented works can be reproduced, remixt, altered, improved, costumized. Because: After the industrial age and our digital age comes the maker age. More and more fab labs and hacker/maker spaces are popping up around the world competing with mass production and empowering people to create smart (activist) devices for themselves. We might have lost the first fight – but now comes round 2.”

* Nicht verpassen: 4. Month of Performance Art in Berlin. “MPA-B is a 31 day, city-wide and artist-run platform for independent performance art practices, running annually in May, that connects and brings together hundreds of artists, spaces, networks and initiatives who collectively contribute to a unique and radical month-long programme, featuring: indoor and outdoor performances, site-specific interventions, talks, workshops, screenings, public encounters and interactions, dinners, durational and days-long actions and other formats and projects which do not have, or reject, any definition.”

“1 Pixel Camera” is an iPhone application which allows the user to take a photograph, select a dominant colour from a photo, and save that colour to the camera roll for storage and sharing on social networks.

“Robot Flâneur” is an explorer for Google Street View, featuring nine cities around the world

“SHANK”, “CRØSS” & “STÖCK”: For Bookkake, a series of flat-pack furniture designs exploring the commodification of desire and the banality of sex. Based on the style of a well-known Swedish furniture company, the designs were created in Google Sketchup, traced in Adobe Illustrator and laid out in InDesign before being published via Lulu.